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Chat with Pomplamoose: reaping the benefits of the internet 101 - and the second live show - Part 2
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Nataly points out that Jack counts on his hands weird. That's a dongle Jack's got there, a flashdrive with zest!
Jack Conte and Nataly Dawn of Pomplamoose are just as adorable (and modest) in person as they are in their youtube videos. I was lucky enough to meet up with them at the Aroma Café in San Rafael the day before Nataly’s 23rd birthday and chat over tea and cider. We talked about their upcoming show at the Brainwash café in San Francisco next Friday November 13th, their second gig as a band EVER, the future of music, the nuts an bolts of being an “internet band,” and recording techniques.
Read part 1 and part 3 of my interview with Pomplamoose.
Jamie Freedman: How’s itunes working out?
Jack Conte: itunes is cool. We have a huge fan base.
Nataly Dawn: We make the most of our money off of itunes. It’s been a way for us to concentrate entirely on music, which is incredible.
JC: We make three times as much than our ejunkie sales. But there’s a bunch of downsides to itunes. We end up making only 64 cents per dollar as opposed to 90 cents per dollar on ejunkie. On that site we just lose a paypal transaction. With itunes, they take 25 percent instead of 10 percent. So, that’s a problem. Also, it costs money to put your stuff up on itunes and it takes it takes 6 weeks to get something up on itunes. We release songs every week, and when we have a song ready to go, we want it to be on itunes NOW. So we release them one at a time on ejunkie. When we hit ten we put it up as an album on itunes.
JF: What does it mean to be an “internet musician”?
ND: It usually means very bad… that’s the sigma that’s hard to get over.
JC: I think it’s very profound though. And I’m very passionate about this: for most of history there’s been a gatekeeper between the artist and the public. The gatekeeper gets to decide what’s cool. He gets to open the gate for some things and close the gate for other things. There are TV stations that decide who gets to play, there are record labels that get to decide who gets to record, there are big shots at the head of every organization that are concerned with moola, and they don’t always do a good job at deciding at what’s going to make moola or what’s going to connect with fans. And for the first time in history - ever - musicians can connect directly with people. It’s a total paradigm shift that I just think is the most exciting thing ever. It’s this rebirth of entrepreneurial spirit in musicians and it makes way for all kinds of new art and music that would never have been possible before. People like weird stuff! Sometimes weird stuff gets popular! Take Tay Zonday and his “Chocolate Rain,” if you had taken that song to a record label, I’m guessing they would have laughed it away. I’m not saying that’s a great song, but the point is, you never know what’s going to connect with people.
ND: There are niche fans out there that will find you.
JC: Niche markets used to be impossible, but the internet has made the niche a viable business model. For the first time you can connect with people globally in what is technically called a niche market. You can all connect together and you can make music for that group of people and there are enough people on the planet that can sustain that as a business model and art form. So that’s how the internet has affected niche markets and niche oriented businesses. And music is just a small piece of that.
JF: How many shows have you had?
JC: This will be our second. We’ve only played once before as Pomplamoose.
ND: Not that we haven’t gotten asked to play other shows, we just like making music and sometimes preparing for a show just ends up taking up too much time. But Danielle [of Danielle Ate the Sandwich] asked us and we wanted to do it. She’s fantastic.
JC: She’s in Seattle, but I’ve always wanted to do some sort of project with her
ND: That’s another thing: the community on youtube!
JC: I get a lot of sh*t for using the word “community” when it comes to youtube, but I really do feel like it’s a community. You know, we drove to New York [to record with Julia Nunes] based on our youtube videos. I’ve been a fan of Julia for the last two years She was featured on the homepage and I’ve been following her since then. And about four, three months ago my phone rang, I picked it up and she said, “hi Jack this is Julia Nunes” and I said "What?!" It caught me completely out of the blue, we had never met and she asked Pomplamoose to come to New York and producer her record. So we packed up our car and drove to New York and were there for a month and produced her record. Her best friend is Lauren O’Connell and we hung out with Lauren and Julia and that whole crew.
ND: We didn’t know Julia from Adam; She didn’t know us. Her parents must have been freaking out: “who are these people!?” And we got along with them so well.
JC: We stayed in her house for a month, without ever having met her.
ND: They became second parents to us. There’s something to be said for that.
JC: youtube allows you to feel like you know someone very well.
JF: Where is the craziest place that one of you fan lives?
JC: All over. We sent out the dongles (USB drives with every mp3, lyric sheets and pictures) to 30 different countries.
JF: What about the special “Pomplamoose” soap you sent out?
ND: The soap went 30 different countries as well. Jack’s sister made a couple hundred bars of special Pomplamoose soup. We want to keep branching out in terms of our merch and find people who have their own thing going and run the business and we don’t have to mirco-manage and they just do their own thing with their own product, they sell it, the package it they send it. We had to stop because she couldn’t make any more soap for practical reasons. But yeah, we want to keep working with people.
Read part 1 and part 3 my interview with Pomplamoose
Also, see my blog www.alwaysmoretohear.com to see the special 'hello" video that Jack and Nataly made for me and my readers!
8pm Greek National Road
9pm Danielle Ate the Sandwich
10 o'clonk Pomplamoose
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